The invention relates to a device for displaying pictograms in a vehicle comprising a control unit and a display unit, in particular an LC display, the control unit controlling the display unit.
The dashboards of, in particular, utility vehicles and buses are equipped with a plurality of symbol lights in order to provide the driver with various information. Since the equipment in modern vehicles increasingly includes electronic control and instrumentation equipment and consequently the driver has to be made aware of more and more information, attempts are being made to find devices which can display the increasing amount of information in a manner which is easily manageable and can be satisfactorily perceived by the driver. Thus, recently, central information modules have become known which comprise an LC display which is arranged in the dashboard in the direct field of vision of the driver and on which information is displayed according to requirements by means of an electronic control unit.
The information which is to be displayed to the driver is often information on the operational status of devices in the vehicle. Moreover, the driver has to be made aware, quickly and in an easily comprehensible way, of faults in devices in the vehicle and of warnings of hazards. For this purpose, the devices in the vehicle or the activation devices which are assigned to them usually output specific messages in the form of electrical signals, which messages are displayed by the display means arranged in the dashboard. Irrespective of whether conventional symbol lights or the display unit of an information module are used as a display means, it has become a widespread practice to present such messages by means of standardized pictograms communicating to the driver the respective information by means of their stylized representation of a specific device in the vehicle.
Because the number of symbol lights in the dashboard had to be reduced for ergonomic reasons and for reasons of cost, central optoelectronic information modules are being used with increasing frequency. However, it is also the case with these information modules that for technical and economic reasons the available active display area of the display unit cannot be increased as desired in order to display the increasing amount of simultaneously occurring messages. For ergonomic reasons and for reasons of safety it is also not sensible to display a large number of messages simultaneously because the driver can only ever absorb a specific amount of information simultaneously and an excessively large quantity of information could also distract him from his actual task of driving. Neither is it possible to reduce the size of the pictograms in order to be able to display simultaneously more pictograms on the available active display area of the display unit because this also infringes legal regulations for maintaining good legibility and clear recognizability.